rhodrymavelyne

It never happened except in Ponclast’s imagination. The confrontation he had with Swift in The Bewitchments of Love and Hate was all they got.

Never mind that hating Swift kept Ponclast going all that time in the Forest of Gebaddon. Never mind that Swift hated him for what he did to his father, to Gahrazel, and perhaps for making him hate himself for being a Varr.

Ponclast was no match for Pellaz. Lileem turned out to be exactly the right person for Ponclast at the right time. In the end, I’m glad things went the way they did in the canon.

I let go of my flights of fanciful fandom about Swift crossing swords with Ponclast or one of his lost brothers. I let go of fantasies of Swift and Tyson fighting back to back, embracing the part of both of them that was Terzian.

There’s many a story about a he with the sword. Far more magical ways are found of coping with their foes, often mingled with mundane ones.

I love the way characters can talk out their problems in the Wraeththu universe without feeling like we’re losing any of the drama. If anything, the drama is being subverted, questioned, and reshaped.

My fancies change into the private scenes, dreams, imaginings of what could have been. Swift could have had nightmares about the events in the second trilogy or even the first. Maybe he and Tyson will talk about these nightmares.

Pellaz and his dynasty are larger than life and I love them. At the same time, I have a soft spot for those Who Dwell in Forever.

Somehow it doesn’t feel like matters have settled between Seel and Cal either. I found myself listening to Me and Ur Ghost by blackbear; picturing Seel coping with all the changes, his emotions for Cal in The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure.

I’m still reading some of Storm Constantine’s Wraeththu books. I’m not sure if she ever told that story.
I look forward to reading the ones that she did; along with the Wraeththu stories others told.

I’m glad she opened the universe up to other writers, allowing Wraeththu to continue. She truly expanded the universe in the second trilogy.

It’s the sort of universe with our combined imaginations that will keep expanding.

For most of the 1990s, I lurked around fanfic sites; shocked and secretly delighted at what I found.

Here LaCroix of Forever Knight got to express his passion for his Nicholas without reservation. Here Mulder of The X-Files didn’t just romance Scully, but let the unresolved tension between himself and Krycek loose in steamy ways. Here the Gua of First Wave weren’t exclusively heterosexual and neither was Cade Foster. Here Derek Rayne of Poltergeist the Legacy didn’t might be Alex Moreau’s mentor in a classical sense, but he’d once been mentored in a similiar fashion by Victor Arkadi. Here Ivanova and Talia of Babylon 5 could explore their romance in more depth. Here Methos and Duncan from Highlander could not just live together, but do so like a married couple. Here Buffy and Faith, the Slayers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer could express their intimate rivalry in other ways than their fists. Here the Watchers from Highlander and Buffy the Vampire Slayer could interact not only with the Legacy, but the Talamasca.

Fanfiction was a deep, guilty pleasure I dared not indulge in myself, even if I lurked obsessively. I was warned if I wanted to see any of my original stories published, I couldn’t be caught writing fanfiction. To make it even more of a guilty pleasure, two of my favorite writers spoke out and took legal action against those who wrote fanfic about their characters.

This crushed me. I felt as if my lover had revealed herself as religious right in the middle of making out, to expose me to a hostile, homophobic public.

Thank every higher power in creation for Storm Constantine. She saved me. I turned to her writing when trying to turn away from my former favorites’s writing. There was a void where they’d been. Storm’s exquisite, poetic prose, rich in slashy characters filled that void.

Storm Constantine had a site with fanfic links. In a moment of bravery, I told her how much I loved her writing. I presented her with a couple of fanfic stories and a poem.

Her thanks and acceptance was a release for my repressed creativity. Being able to write fanfic spurred me on in my original works, breathing life into them once more.

Now I’ve found Archive of Our Own, a wonderful site which feels just right to post on. I’m able to share some of those ideas which have been brewing in my head for years.

As I go through my files of unfinished stories, I find fragments of story I never dare to share. I find stories about Micki Foster of Friday the 13th: The Series and Cade Foster of First Wave being cousins (on the opposite side of the family as Ryan Dallion and Uncle Lewis Vendredi) along with descendants of Nick Knight from Forever Knight. There are stories where Natalie Lambert and Tracy Vetter of Forever Knight find themselves roused from death as Immortals part of Highlander’s Game while Janette Du Charme turns Tessa Noel into a vampire. Duncan MacLeod starts having flashbacks of both Janette and Nicholas feeding on him while Methos recalls how much he teased General Lucius, a.k.a. LaCroix when he was Death.

Colonel Grace of First Wave reveals that she’s not only part of the Illuminati, but Kristen Adams’s aunt in Poltergeist the Legacy; as well as having connections to the Syndicate in The X-Files. This is why Kristen Adams died on Poltergeist the Legacy, after dying previously as Faith’s Watcher in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Kristen was cloned, but why do none of her clones have the acidic green blood of a human/alien hybrid? Why does she disappear like a Gua, something everyone who witnesses her deaths have trouble remembering? Why was Alex in her fluctating vampire state able to not only drink Kristen’s blood, but have some of her humanity return?

All of these stories have been brewing in my imagination for years. Now some of them are finally taking shape in stories.

I’m reminded of them as I watched Kristen Lehman in Midnight Mass and Altered Carbon, remembering some of the crazy crossover ideas I had for Kristen Adams of Poltergeist the Legacy. I’m reminded of them as I sort through my files, finding old fanfics I wished I could share, but didn’t dare.

Thank you, Archive of Our Own, for being a place where I can at last share these stories. Thank you to everyone who ever gave me kudos there. You gave me the courage to stop lurking and start writing.
Thank you to all the fanfic writers I was too shy to thank when I was lurking, secretly savoring your stories. You led the way. You were brave. You are amazing. You inspire others to be amazing, too.

Thank you to Storm Constantine for being the divinely creative and supportive force that you were and are, even if you’re no longer with us. Your words are eternally charged with that spirit. To read you is to remind me of that spirit.

May your spirit continue to guide and inspire us all.

Revisiting a favorite series is like reacquainting myself with an old love. I’m in constant danger of falling in love all over again. Or perhaps I should have say I’m fortunate enough to taste that passion once again.

Before creating The Keep with a group of other creatives (an interactive fantasy yaoi game where vampires and clerics struggled for control of a walled city), before I discovered CLAMP, there was Storm Constantine.

It’s hard to remember when my love affair with her began. I think I picked up the first of the Wraethru books, feeling a measure of fascination, but I was truly hooked when I discovered The Crown of Silence at my local Barnes & Noble.

I’d never read anything like it. The cast of complex characters, major and minor, each offering a point of view, often warring with each other’s, created a mythic landscape which lay over the complex fantasy world, informing and shaping it.

The Crown of Silence was the second book in a trilogy. Not only did I have to have Sea Dragon Heir and The Way of Light (Books 1 and 2). I had to read more of Storm Constantine’s work. Everything I could get my hands on.

I was happy to find her at the L.A. Library, delighting in Sign of the Sacred. Here was a complex fantasy story with at least one LGBTQIA+ major character, a quest surrounding a dubious mythic figure whom inspired to people to follow him for reasons as much to do with themselves as him.

This was the kind of fantasy I wanted to write. Emotionally driven, filled with as much speculative thought as action. More so. Fiction which allowed the feminine eye and male eyes not as obsessed with what females were to them to create the philosophical landscape.

Something wondrous happened. More of Storm Constantine’s work started appearing in bookstores. I snatched up Calenture, Burying the Shadow, and Sign of the Sacred (for I wanted to own it, to read it again and again) at Street Lights in San Francisco.

How I loved it, fallen angels as vampires in a fantasy setting where the main character was not only the protégé of one of them, but she was a soulscaper, a fascinating profession which involved entering a person’s inner mythic landscape! Or a sole survivor of a mysterious condition which turned everyone but himself into transparent, statue like-creatures, creating characters in his loneliness. Characters who populated a fantastic world, characters he’d fall in love with and resent, only to find they were more real than he’d imagined. Certainly as real as he was.

As a lonely, overimaginative person who loved to speculate in fiction, but seldom found people she could share these ideas with, Storm Constantine’s stories really spoke to me. They dared me, challenging me to step out in a way which worked for my style, my ideas, even my experiences rather than telling another tale about a star ship, a space station, or a rugged quest across a rough fantasy landscape.

The quest could be so much than this. They could take place inside the imagination, shaping the world around them.

I played with these possibilities, marveling at them when I found Scenting Hallowed Blood. I grabbed it, started reading, found myself enchanted. Again. Shem’s irrascible passion and irritation in the face of his destiny, Daniel’s aloof sweetness; the greedy ambition of Sofia, Tamara, and even Meggie all captivatd me. Enniel’s elegant stuffiness was worthy of a prince in Vampire: The Masquerade. How like and unlike these fallen angels were to vampires.

Once again I’d picked up the second book in a trilogy. I searched for the first and found Stalking Tender Prey. I was delighted and alarmed by Peveral Othman. He reminded me of people who’d fascinated and hurt me as a child and a teenager. How well I understood the jealousies he inspired in everyone he touched. How chilling to recognize the games he was playing, to see his victims realize what was happening, and struggle to free themselves. Often they failed.

This was a story which was only too real to me, yet it was threaded with magic and myth. How I longed to tell my own stories of troubling passion, wrapped in my own fairytale twists. Too long had I been trapped, crushed under the pressure of genre, the tropes of genre I thought I had to follow. Storm Constantine showed me just how speculative fiction could be. You could push the limits of gender, of expectations. You could create entire worlds by pushing them.

I was fortunate enough to find the Wraethru omnibus which contained the first three of Storm Constantine Wraethru tales. Swift’s story of isolation, growing up sheltered in a far from ideal setting while he awakened to the truth also spoke to me, kindling awareness of how sheltered I was. How much those who’d protected me had given to do so.

I saw myself in Storm Constantine’s stories, but I also saw the possibility of what I could write. Characters could shape their own landscape with their belief and passions. They could fall in love with people who weren’t there, have conversations with them. They could create gods. They could create reality. They might be trying to figure out what reality was, often questioning it.

My Tales of the Navel were shaped by the ideas Storm Constantine inspired with her writing as was The Players Are the Thing. She showed me how speculative fiction could. What I wanted my speculative fiction to be.

Thank you, Storm Constantine, for offering up your stories. Thank you for inspiring me by showing me what I could write. I wouldn’t be the author I am today if not for you. Your work continues to inspire me when I’m trapped by writer’s block even while they tempt me.

It’s only too easy to drop everything and surrender to the pages of your stories, losing myself in your characters once more. At the same time you remind my own stories, making me want to write, reminding me of what I want to write.

Thank you.